Police conduct raids in Brussels: Man with ‘suitcase full of explosives’ shot, arrested

The federal prosecutor’s office said the arrest was one of three in Brussels on Friday linked to the arrest in Paris the previous day of an Islamist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of plotting a new attack.

A suspect lies on the platform after he was shot and wounded by police in Brussels Friday. Reuters

Belgian police captured a suspect carrying what a broadcaster said was a suitcase full of explosives on Friday, after shooting him in the leg during a major police operation following Tuesday’s suicide bombings in Brussels. The federal prosecutor’s office said the arrest was one of three in Brussels on Friday linked to the arrest in Paris the previous day of an Islamist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of plotting a new attack.

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Nine people in total were arrested since Thursday in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities have swooped on militants they link both to the Brussels attacks that killed 31 people and to attacks in Paris last November that killed 130.

Heavily armed police and troops with trucks cordoned off an area around a major intersection in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek. Three blasts could be heard, which the local mayor Bernard Clerfayt said were controlled explosions.

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Belgian public broadcaster RTBF quoted Clerfayt as saying the suspect was detained after being wounded and that he was linked to Tuesday’s suicide bombings in Brussels. It said he had been found to be in possession of a suitcase full of explosives.

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Witnesses told local media police had shot the man in the leg at a tram stop after he failed to respond to their orders. One witness told RTBF the man had a girl of about eight with him. “I heard two explosions, they were shooting. I opened the window and saw a man lying near the tram stop. The police ordered him to show his hands, remove his jacket. They said that if he did not comply, they would use their weapons,” a witness who lives nearby told La Libre newspaper.

Video from the scene showed the man lying on his side, shattered glass from the tram shelter smashed by bullets at his feet. A bomb squad robot approached the wounded man, checking for explosives.

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Islamic State suicide bombers hit Brussels airport and a metro train on Tuesday in the worst such attack in Belgian history. Investigators believe those attacks were carried out by the same cell responsible for November’s gun and bomb attacks in Paris.

The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said six people were held in Brussels on Thursday, of whom three were released and three were remanded in custody facing possible charges.

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Three others were detained on Friday following the arrest in France of Reda Kriket, a 34-year-old Frenchman sentenced to 10 years in Brussels in absentia in July as part of a Islamist recruiting network dubbed the Syrian Connection.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine said German police had arrested two people, one of whom had received phone messages with the name of the metro station bomber and the word “fin” — French for “end” — three minutes before the metro blast. The German interior ministry declined immediate comment.

A person familiar with the investigation in Belgium said one of the people arrested there was believed to be a suspected accomplice caught on security camera footage with the metro station bomber.

“We have strong indications that this is the suspect who was hunted for the last couple of days. The identification is still ongoing,” the source said. However he said those arrested before midday on Friday did not include a third suspect seen on video alongside the two who blew themselves up at the airport.